The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a new manual designed to support the implementation of evidence-based psychological self-help interventions across diverse settings.
Psychological self-help interventions: Delivering self-help for individuals, featuring Step-by-Step and Doing What Matters in Times of Stress provides programme managers, service providers, and implementers with practical guidance for delivering guided and unguided psychological self-help interventions at scale.
The manual focuses on two WHO-developed interventions:
- Step-by-Step (SbS): A guided self-help intervention for adults experiencing symptoms of depression.
- Doing What Matters in Times of Stress (DWM): A practical stress management intervention designed to help people cope with adversity and challenging life circumstances.
Both interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in large research trials across multiple settings when delivered with as little as 15 minutes of helper support per week over a five-week period. Step-by-Step is already being implemented nationally in countries including Lebanon and Thailand, demonstrating its potential to expand access to evidence-based mental health support in routine care and humanitarian contexts.
The new manual includes implementation guidance for both interventions, alongside a web annex providing the complete Step-by-Step programme content to support local delivery and adaptation.
For organisations seeking scalable, low-intensity mental health interventions, this resource offers practical guidance grounded in implementation experience and evidence.
